I have one eye, but all my own teeth. Would you like to count them?

Ice Age: Collision Course

(2016)

(SPOILERS) Five hasn’t been the charm lately, underlining, as if it were necessary, that studios never know to quit when they’re ahead. True, Fast Five found its franchise propelled to new box office heights, but this summer’s Transformers: The Last Knight looks like it will have to settle for about half the gross of its predecessor (pretty awful considering Paramount set up a writer’s room in order to spew out a whole universe of robot spin-off movies and sequels). Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazars Tell No Tales has actually done okay, but that’s still a $300m drop on On Stranger Tides. And last year, Ice Age: Collision Course also saw the franchise balloon suddenly deflate without warning, again taking half the previous instalment’s take. The lesson? Viewer fatigue, when it strikes, can strike suddenly and devastatingly. And yet, the thing is, for all the drubbing this fifth outing took, it isn’t that bad.

The caveat here is that none of the Ice Ages are really especially good, espousing as they do the same lumpenly indolent and inclusive family message the Fast & Furious moves do, but with considerably less élan. Their salvation has always been Scrat’s interludes, and this one is no exception, going for broke with the Warner Bros influence; if he’s Blue Sky’s Wylie Coyote (and the acorn is his Road Runner), then Collision Course finds him in Marvin the Martian territory. Most critics evidently felt this was a step too far, marrying an already historically implausible cartoon series with ancient aliens, but this is a series that was long since desperately in need of some form of distinguishing feature (I can’t tell any of the other sequels apart from each other, and I doubt that I’m alone).

In pursuit of the object of his enduring affection, Scrat finds himself aboard a UFO, in space, and causing all sorts of carnage that puts the Earth in peril, and from which the usual crew must deliver themselves. The mammoths lead by Ray Romano’s Manny (I always imagine John Ratzneberger is voicing him), are a complete snooze, and Dennis Leary’s sabre-toothed tiger Diego isn’t much better (there’s one nice moment where he and Jennifer Lopez’s Shira tuck into some grapes and inadvertently scare some kids witless with their “bloody” fangs).

But offering compensation are John Leguizamo’s sloth, an abject idiot prone to rubbing his eyes with poison ivy, Sean William Scott’s opossum (during the mammoth daughter’s parental training, he plays the mewling infant, before announcing “I am a method actor so I will need to be changed” – as per usual, there are numerous bodily function gags), and Simon Pegg’s antic weasel, who has a lot going on in his brain, including Neil deBuck Weasel (Neil deGrasse Tyson).

There are nominal threats from Nick Offerman’s dromaeosaur and his sons, and the oncoming meteor shower, but there’s little sense of urgency to the gang’s quest to save themselves and the planet, which is pretty much the somnambulant tone that afflicted earlier escapades. They arrive in Geotopia, where an animal elite led by Shangri Llama announce “We are young, happy and safe and always will be” and despite their unnatural predilection, so proves to be the case. If you cut out the moralising, sermonising and ineffectually affirmative statements, you’d be left with a 30-minute Ice Age: Collision Course consisting of a sabretooth squirrel, a sloth, an opossum and a one-eyed weasel. And it would be pretty good.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

You were this amazing occidental samurai.

Ricochet (1991) (SPOILERS) You have to wonder at Denzel Washington’s agent at this point in the actor’s career. He’d recently won his first Oscar for Glory , yet followed it with less-than-glorious heart-transplant ghost comedy Heart Condition (Bob Hoskins’ racist cop receives Washington’s dead lawyer’s ticker; a recipe for hijinks!) Not long after, he dipped his tentative toe in the action arena with this Joel Silver production; Denzel has made his share of action fare since, of course, most of it serviceable if unremarkable, but none of it comes near to delivering the schlocky excesses of Ricochet , a movie at once ingenious and risible in its plot permutations, performances and production profligacy.

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

Well, something’s broke on your daddy’s spaceship.

Apollo 13 (1995) (SPOILERS) The NASA propaganda movie to end all NASA propaganda movies. Their original conception of the perilous Apollo 13 mission deserves due credit in itself; what better way to bolster waning interest in slightly naff perambulations around a TV studio than to manufacture a crisis event, one emphasising the absurd fragility of the alleged non-terrestrial excursions and the indomitable force that is “science” in achieving them? Apollo 13 the lunar mission was tailor made for Apollo 13 the movie version – make believe the make-believe – and who could have been better to lead this fantasy ride than Guantanamo Hanks at his all-American popularity peak?

I can’t be the worst. What about that hotdog one?

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) (SPOILERS) It would have been a merciful release, had the title card “ The End ”, flashing on screen a little before the ninety-minute mark, not been a false dawn. True, I would still have been unable to swab the bloody dildoes fight from my mind, but at least Everything Everywhere All at Once would have been short. Indeed, by the actual end I was put in mind of a line spoken by co-star James Wong in one of his most indelible roles: “ Now this really pisses me off to no end ”. Or to put it another way, Everything Everywhere All at Once rubbed me up the wrong which way quite a lot of most of the time.

We’ve got the best ball and chain in the world. Your ass.

Wedlock (1991) (SPOILERS) The futuristic prison movie seemed possessed of a particular cachet around this time, quite possibly sparked by the grisly possibilities of hi-tech disincentives to escape. On that front, HBO TV movie Wedlock more than delivers its FX money shot. Elsewhere, it’s less sure of itself, rather fumbling when it exchanges prison tropes for fugitives-on-the-run ones.

Drank the red. Good for you.

Morbius (2022) (SPOILERS) Generic isn’t necessarily a slur. Not if, by implication, it’s suggestive of the kind of movie made twenty years ago, when the alternative is the kind of super-woke content Disney currently prioritises. Unfortunately, after a reasonable first hour, Morbius descends so resignedly into such unmoderated formula that you’re left with a too-clear image of Sony’s Spider-Verse when it lacks a larger-than-life performer (Tom Hardy, for example) at the centre of any given vehicle.

So, you’re telling me that NASA is going to kill the President of the United States with an earthquake?

Conspiracy Theory (1997) (SPOILERS) Mel Gibson’s official rehabilitation occurred with the announcement of 2016’s Oscar nominations, when Hacksaw Ridge garnered six nods, including Mel as director. Obviously, many refuse to be persuaded that there’s any legitimate atonement for the things someone says. They probably weren’t even convinced by Mel’s appearance in Daddy’s Home 2 , an act of abject obeisance if ever there was one. In other circles, though, Gibbo, or Mad Mel, is venerated as a saviour unsullied by the depraved Hollywood machine, one of the brave few who would not allow them to take his freedom. Or at least, his values. Of course, that’s frequently based on alleged comments he made, ones it’s highly likely he didn’t. But doesn’t that rather appeal to the premise of his 23-year-old star vehicle Conspiracy Theory , in which “ A good conspiracy theory is an unproveable one ”?

Twenty dwarves took turns doing handstands on the carpet.

Bugsy (1991) (SPOILERS) Bugsy is very much a Warren Beatty vanity project (aren’t they all, even the ones that don’t seem that way on the surface?), to the extent of his playing a title character a decade and a half younger than him. As such, it makes sense that producer Warren’s choice of director wouldn’t be inclined to overshadow star Warren, but the effect is to end up with a movie that, for all its considerable merits (including a script from James Toback chock full of incident), never really feels quite focussed, that it’s destined to lead anywhere, even if we know where it’s going.

He’ll regret it to his dying day, if ever he lives that long.

The Quiet Man (1952) (SPOILERS) The John Wayne & John Ford film for those who don’t like John Wayne & John Ford films? The Quiet Man takes its cues from Ford’s earlier How Green Was My Valley in terms of, well less Anglophile and Hibernophile and Cambrophile nostalgia respectively for past times, climes and heritage, as Wayne’s pugilist returns to his family seat and stirs up a hot bed of emotions, not least with Maureen O’Hara’s red-headed hothead. The result is a very likeable movie, for all its inculcated Oirishness and studied eccentricity.

He doesn’t want to lead you. He just wants you to follow.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) (SPOILERS) The general failing of the prequel concept is a fairly self-evident one; it’s spurred by the desire to cash in, rather than to tell a story. This is why so few prequels, in any form, are worth the viewer/reader/listener’s time, in and of themselves. At best, they tend to be something of a well-rehearsed fait accompli. In the movie medium, even when there is material that withstands closer inspection (the Star Wars prequels; The Hobbit , if you like), the execution ends up botched. With Fantastic Beasts , there was never a whiff of such lofty purpose, and each subsequent sequel to the first prequel has succeeded only in drawing attention to its prosaic function: keeping franchise flag flying, even at half-mast. Hence Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore , belatedly arriving after twice the envisaged gap between instalments and course-correcting none of the problems present in The Crimes of Grindelwald .

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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